MKT 595 Week 1

Social Media: Now even the old folks are into it!

Late Sunday night a few hours into my flight home from vacation the 60+ year old man next to me on the airplane told me that he just joined facebook because his Advertising agency got approval earlier in the week to start placing ads on facebook.  I found this very interesting because someone who started in advertising many years before the Internet was popular was now excited to be able to place an ad on a social networking site.  In case anyone is unfamiliar with the site I am talking about please see:  www.facebook.com .  In July of 2010 it had more than 500 million active users and is currently the most used social network worldwide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook  So this of course is the perfect place for all those wishing to target the over 13 market to place there ads.  I have noticed that all the ads I see on my page are directed towards someone my age and in the city of Chicago.  I guess we all can just hope that our personal information is not given out to the advertising companies, but I guess if you put it online everyone can have access to it.

According to my MKT 595 class social media such as facebook is a delivery mechanism for “viral ideas” in which such are useful and some are for entertainment.  I agree with this and think that a majority of the social media out there is purely for entertainment.